Game Theory on the Ground: The Effect of Increased Patrols on Deterring Poachers
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Date
2020
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
arXiv preprint arXiv
Abstract
Applications of artificial intelligence for wildlife
protection have focused on learning models of
poacher behavior based on historical patterns.
However, poachers’ behaviors are described not
only by their historical preferences, but also their
reaction to ranger patrols. Past work applying machine
learning and game theory to combat poaching
have hypothesized that ranger patrols deter poachers,
but have been unable to find evidence to identify
how or even if deterrence occurs. Here for the
first time, we demonstrate a measurable deterrence
effect on real-world poaching data. We show that
increased patrols in one region deter poaching in
the next timestep, but poachers then move to neighboring
regions. Our findings offer guidance on how
adversaries should be modeled in realistic gametheoretic
settings.
Description
Keywords
Game Theory, Ground, Patrols, Deterring Poachers
Citation
Xu, L., Perrault, A., Plumptre, A., Driciru, M., Wanyama, F., Rwetsiba, A., & Tambe, M. (2020). Game theory on the ground: The effect of increased patrols on deterring poachers. arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.12411.